Latest Reviews - Page 21

There's an episode of Family Guy in which Peter Griffin attends a production of Uncle Vanya. Partway through the play he stands up, bored out of his mind, and shouts, "for crying out loud, somebody throw a pie!" That's more or less how we felt playing VectorRacing.
VectorRacing is the epic tale...

Shortly after the original release of the excellent Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon for Nintendo 64, Konami released another game with the same title for the original Game Boy. Tragically, the N64 game has still not been released on Wii Virtual Console, but is this handheld offering a good alternative?
This instalment of the Goemon...

There's a story in Crazy Chicken Pirates 3D, but believe us, you won't need one. The game — whose title reads about as gracefully as magnetic poetry — sees you gunning down chickens for 90 seconds. Then, we guess, you can do it again. If you'd like to. You may not, but the option to play again is about the only option the...

There's always the temptation to be a bit snobbish about games that are ported to traditional consoles from smartphones. Given the enormous success of "casual" experiences on mobiles, many dedicated gamers view even the best titles as vapid, shallow experiences — a perspective which is reinforced by the hordes of clones and rip-offs...

Good intentions most certainly pave the road to disappointment in Touch Battle Tank 3D. While it's clear that the 70 levels of non-stop blasting are meant to feel like frantic, satisfying plunges into arcade-style madness, it's also clear that the components simply don't come together the way they need to. Touch Battle Tank 3D simply feels...

Many will be familiar with Toki Tori on WiiWare, released a few years ago and since on several systems; it's been quite the popular game, but not many people are familiar with the original entry in the series. This is understandable, because it was released at the tail end of the Game Boy Color's life cycle back in 2002, but now has a...

On first inspection, Planet Crashers is the cute, warm and whimsical RPG world you would expect from Mutant Mudds developer Renegade Kid, providing a shot of humour, quirkiness and style to an already crowded and tired genre. However, much like other adventure RPGs lining our shelves at the moment, Planet Crashers is very much a case...

Poor Muddy Mole has returned home to find his family kidnapped by the evil farmer Jinbe. That's the entire plot, and we're happy about that. After all, Mole Mania isn't about storytelling; it's about a massive gauntlet of clever puzzles, and that's exactly why we like it.
Divided into eight very large levels, Muddy's adventure finds him...

Dot Runner: Complete Edition is the latest release from Intense, developer of unique DSiWare RPG GO Series: Picdun. This outing shares the dual perspectives of that title but little else; here you collect dots as a futuristic man-on-a-mission named BOLT in a chase puzzler that's fast and fun, but seriously flawed.
While...

The ...by Nikoli series is nothing new to the eShop, but Masyu by Nikoli stands out for being a puzzle of Nikoli's own creation. This means that if you'd like to play it, more than likely this will be your only option on the service. Therefore the question really boils down to whether or not that puzzle is worth seeking out on...

The Phantom Thief Stina and 30 Jewels is an arcade-like game that has you breaking into an assortment of stages, grabbing keycodes, deactivating security systems, and escaping into the night with shiny jewel in hand. As a concept, Phantom Thief is intriguing, but while it can be fun, it's ultimately let down by...

After the success of the first Wario Land, Nintendo decided to take another shot at putting its beloved new anti-hero in the spotlight. To differentiate it from Mario even further, it removed the "Super Mario Land" prefix and also made a massive gameplay change for Wario Land II. But is it one for the better?
Defeated at the end of...

We're on to you, UFO Interactive. You've released these side-scrolling action games every few months now and, we'll admit, each one has had a fairly interesting premise — a samurai slicer with RPG elements and a zombie-flavored rhythm game? We can dig it. Now you roll out what seems like an ode to LCD handheld games...

It’s easy to forget about all of this multi-functional nonsense and think of 3DS as an all-out gaming machine, but occasionally a new app appears to remind us that, actually, Nintendo intends for the system to offer much more. The arrival of Sparkle Snapshots 3D in the eShop is one such reminder, a camera app designed to...

Poor Prince Theo. Not only is his first game still unavailable in the eShop, but his second adventure begins with all of his previous hard work being undone, an evil spirit being set free by would-be grave robbers, the Sword of Hope being stolen, and a young orphan accusing him of murdering his father. He really can't...

While primarily known as the star of a reliably charming series of platformers, Kirby has also starred in a fair share of spin-offs. One of those, Kirby's Block Ball, came to the eShop just a few months ago. It's a flawed but fun reimagining of Breakout. It plays to the strengths of both Breakout as a template and...

Arc System Works, most fondly known for the Guilty Gear and BlazBlue series of 2D fighting games, also dabbles in the casual sports genre with its Family series for WiiWare. Those titles generally haven't been very well received, but the series' first entry into the eShop, Family Tennis 3D, is a happy reversal of that trend...

Hamster is now at the halfway point of chopping up upcoming retail release Sudoku + 7 other Complex Puzzles by Nikoli and selling each puzzle type individually through the eShop. With Sudoku and Kakuro out of the way, the far more interesting chunks have started to hit as evidenced by last month's Slitherlink and now Akari.

While the eShop already has Golf for the Game Boy available, anyone who purchased that game may now start to wish they had saved their money. NES Open Tournament Golf is a superior experience in every way. Perhaps not substantially so, but it's certainly a more rewarding way to spend a day on the links.
NES Open...

When the Game Boy hit store shelves in 1989 it didn’t take long for a vast swathe of third-party publishers – many of which had grown fat on the profits generated by Nintendo’s astonishingly popular NES – to sign up to produce software for the device. Konami was one of the first to pledge its allegiance to...